A TOWERING ISSUE: Contract air traffic control towers are staying open through September thanks to Congress and DOT, but the issue will be back again before we know it. The late April fix was only good for the current fiscal year, and lawmakers and aviation groups are already working to avoid another drawn-out fight over keeping them open. MT caught up with Sens. Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal, the lead tower funding advocates in the last go-around. Both are talking with appropriators and pushing for a dedicated pot of money to keep the towers open for all of the next fiscal year. “There seems to me there’s a consensus that we want to make sure the control towers and FAA furloughs don’t become an issue,” Moran told MT. Blumenthal agreed: “There’s a real strong constituency for it based on the merits, not just the politics.”

The politics of it: Blumenthal told MT that he hopes that “everyone involved has learned a lesson that these contract tower really are vital to air transportation.” Moran also hopes the issue isn’t as politicized as last time — but also took a shot at the administration, which he said wanted to maximize the sequester pain to get public opinion on its side. “I hope the political aspect of this issue has gone away. I’ve always believed that there was a demonstration aspect to this, trying to demonstrate that sequestration is so bad that we cannot afford to even do the things that are essential, so I hope that’s diminished,” he told MT.

MT EXCLUSIVE —FRA launches crossing app: Today the Federal Railroad Administration rolls out a new iOS app that includes information on the country’s 200,000 road-rail intersections. The Rail Crossing Locator uses your location to pull up info on nearby crossings and includes things like the kind of signal at each intersection. Accidents at crossings are down 34 percent over the last decade, but DOT says that’s not enough. “Safety is our highest priority, and at the Department of Transportation, we believe that giving people better information leads to smarter and safer travel,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will say in today’s announcement. “With the Rail Crossing Locator, individuals can use a mobile app to access information wherever they are to improve neighborhood safety and make better personal travel choices.”

T&I SHUFFLE — Capuano ‘considering’: If Eleanor Holmes Norton and Corrine Brown both pass on the ranking spot for T&I's highways subcommittee, that could tee up Mike Capuano further down on the seniority chain. Alison Mills, Capuano's spox, said he would “certainly consider it” but that it'd have to be balanced with his current ranking spot on the Financial Services panel in charge of housing and insurance.

HAPPENING TODAY — Trucker hours, THUD and TWIC: House T&I’s highways panel holds a hearing on hours of service rules for truckers. An hour before the 10 a.m. hearing, family members of those killed in truck crashes will gather outside of the Rayburn hearing room to talk about the need for the stricter fatigue rules. The House Appropriations THUD panel is expected to unveil its DOT funding bill sometime today ahead of a Wednesday markup. And over in the Cannon building, a Homeland Security panel holds a hearing on the future of the TWIC program.

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NTSB MAKES METRO-NORTH RECOMMENDATION: The safety agency is asking MTA’s Metro-North railroad to implement redundant signals following the May death of a track foreman who was struck by a train. The incident, unrelated to the May 17 accident that injured 60 people when two commuter trains collided, happened after a “student controller” reopened a section of track without first getting proper approval. The train, travelling at 70 miles per hour, then hit the worker. In a Monday letter, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman recommends that the railroad require redundant signal procedures like “shunting,” which involves a device attached to the tracks that alerts train operators to nearby workers. Read it: http://1.usa.gov/16B5sw0

IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREEN: Los Angeles wants to repaint a bike lane on Spring Street, but the film industry and Teamsters aren’t happy with the color. They want a “forest green” instead of a bright, reflective green that hurts filming on “one of the only streets in Los Angeles that can stand in for cities like New York, Philadelphia or Chicago.” In a letter to the L.A. City Council, the groups note that “our film industry coalition supports bike lanes” and that “our solitary concern rests with the current design of the bike lane and the amount of color that would be applied.” Read on: http://bit.ly/19e2Y7Q

DRIVE-AROUNDS ARE THE NEW FLY-INS: Finally, it’s not a presidential motorcade tying up traffic downtown. Anyone with a meeting to get to tomorrow morning probably wants to steer clear of driving through the area around the Capitol from 10:30-11:30 a.m. as what organizers describe as hundreds of motorcyclists and classic car owners drive around to protest ethanol fuel mandates. Opponents of E15 have warned that the higher blend of ethanol in gasoline will damage car and motorcycle engines. The event, organized by the American Motorcyclist Association, will also host speeches from Republican Reps. Tim Griffin, Jim Sensenbrenner, Chris Stewart and David Valadao, as well as former Sen. Wayne Allard, the VP for government relations at the AMA.

MT POLL — Meet me in the lobby: All the recent talk of the bike lobby got MT thinking — what’s the most effective lobby in the transpo world? Not just the biggest in term of people and dollars — what mode do you think best uses its resources, limited or great, to get lawmakers on its side? Vote before Sunday at noon: http://bit.ly/15bjL75

THE COUNTDOWN: It’s been 51 days since President Obama announced the nomination of Anthony Foxx as transportation secretary. DOT funding and passenger rail policy both run out in 105 days. Surface transportation policy is up in 473 days and FAA policy in 835 days. The mid-term elections are in 504 days.

CABOOSE — Futuristic past: Shorpy takes you back in time to the TWA terminal in New York’s Idlewild Airport (now JFK Airport) nearly 50 years ago. Give it a look: http://bit.ly/12QW5ua

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Authors:

About The Author

Adam Snider is a transportation reporter for POLITICO Pro and author of Morning Transportation. He has covered transportation since 2007, joining POLITICO in 2011 to launch MT and later found the word “Mica-ism.”

Snider is a fan of all modes of transportation, though nothing beats a good silly walk. In his spare time, he can be found brewing a hoppy beer, rooting for the Nationals, watching a bad 1970s horror movie or exploring the District from his home base in Mount Pleasant.

Adam studied English and communications at Clemson University in South Carolina. His work has been featured by Nieman Journalism Lab and his snark has appeared on MSNBC. He has had several works of fiction published in literary journals and is constantly reminded of his proclamation to a fiction professor many years ago that journalism is for sellouts who abandon their creative dreams.